Stephen Hawking recently declared the death of philosophy. Is he right? Has science rendered philosophy obsolete? Should we be looking to science to answer the biggest questions, or are there areas of understanding that science cannot reach that philosophy can?

Personally, I'm of the view that they aren't even opposites, and the views expressed by Lewis Wolpert in this video are far too common. He clearly doesn't even know what philosophy is and is struggling even to conceptualize what it does. His standard retort to every point the philosophers make is just a "No it doesn't!" Without any substance. It's truly painful to watch. Hey, scientists, not everyone thinks like you.

I think that Science still hasn't got dick to say about Ethics, which is the really interesting part of Philosophy (Metaethics in particular), so I think such a statement is stupid.Now, Science has rendered a lot of Naturalphilosophy and Metaphysics moot, and I am FINE with that. In fact, I fully support it. Right now, I am working on incorporating Ethics into a scientific paradigm too, so that we can reduce moral statements to natural, empirical statements (i.e I am doing some writing on the subject), but the question won't be settled for a looong time. If ever.

Edit: Besides, don't they understand that 'Science' is just another Paradigm, which can readily be interchanged, should it so be fit?

Realitycrash:I think that Science still hasn't got dick to say about Ethics, which is the really interesting part of Philosophy (Metaethics in particular), so I think such a statement is stupid.Now, Science has rendered a lot of Naturalphilosophy and Metaphysics moot, and I am FINE with that. In fact, I fully support it. Right now, I am working on incorporating Ethics into a scientific paradigm too, so that we can reduce moral statements to natural, empirical statements (i.e I am doing some writing on the subject), but the question won't be settled for a looong time. If ever.

Edit: Besides, don't they understand that 'Science' is just another Paradigm, which can readily be interchanged, should it so be fit?

On the other hand, Ethics is actively harmful to the betterment of Science.

Random example, pretty much 100% of the data and knowledge about how the human body reacts to extreme temperatures comes from the Nazi's experiments, which has led to the development of treatments for things like hypothermia and frostbite.

Likewise, the data obtained by the Japanese Unit 731 was used after the war to found a pharmaceutical company, Green Cross. Interestingly, they had quite a substantial amount of medical data from their experiments, but the US Government only took the data on biological weapons and ignored the medical data.

Edit: Another non-holocausty example; human cloning has been banned the world over because of the ethical concerns.

Kopikatsu:On the other hand, Ethics is actively harmful to the betterment of Science.

Random example, pretty much 100% of the data and knowledge about how the human body reacts to extreme temperatures comes from the Nazi's experiments, which has led to the development of treatments for things like hypothermia and frostbite.

Likewise, the data obtained by the Japanese Unit 731 was used after the war to found a pharmaceutical company, Green Cross. Interestingly, they had quite a substantial amount of medical data from their experiments, but the US Government only took the data on biological weapons and ignored the medical data.

Edit: Another non-holocausty example; human cloning has been banned the world over because of the ethical concerns.

IIRC, there was no real data collected from the Nazi experiments, it was all Unit 731.

Philosophy, IMHO, is still important, because there are some things science can't answer, and never will be able to. Not just ethics, but anything you can't really prove or disprove. Now, those things might not be of immediate practical use, but still worth thinking about.

Realitycrash:I think that Science still hasn't got dick to say about Ethics, which is the really interesting part of Philosophy (Metaethics in particular), so I think such a statement is stupid.Now, Science has rendered a lot of Naturalphilosophy and Metaphysics moot, and I am FINE with that. In fact, I fully support it. Right now, I am working on incorporating Ethics into a scientific paradigm too, so that we can reduce moral statements to natural, empirical statements (i.e I am doing some writing on the subject), but the question won't be settled for a looong time. If ever.

Edit: Besides, don't they understand that 'Science' is just another Paradigm, which can readily be interchanged, should it so be fit?

On the other hand, Ethics is actively harmful to the betterment of Science.

Random example, pretty much 100% of the data and knowledge about how the human body reacts to extreme temperatures comes from the Nazi's experiments, which has led to the development of treatments for things like hypothermia and frostbite.

Likewise, the data obtained by the Japanese Unit 731 was used after the war to found a pharmaceutical company, Green Cross. Interestingly, they had quite a substantial amount of medical data from their experiments, but the US Government only took the data on biological weapons and ignored the medical data.

Edit: Another non-holocausty example; human cloning has been banned the world over because of the ethical concerns.

Well, not per necessity it is not. Ethics is not set in stone. Also, one can ask himself: What's the point of Science? Science for Science's sake, or for humans sake?

Kopikatsu:On the other hand, Ethics is actively harmful to the betterment of Science.

Random example, pretty much 100% of the data and knowledge about how the human body reacts to extreme temperatures comes from the Nazi's experiments, which has led to the development of treatments for things like hypothermia and frostbite.

Likewise, the data obtained by the Japanese Unit 731 was used after the war to found a pharmaceutical company, Green Cross. Interestingly, they had quite a substantial amount of medical data from their experiments, but the US Government only took the data on biological weapons and ignored the medical data.

Edit: Another non-holocausty example; human cloning has been banned the world over because of the ethical concerns.

IIRC, there was no real data collected from the Nazi experiments, it was all Unit 731.

Philosophy, IMHO, is still important, because there are some things science can't answer, and never will be able to. Not just ethics, but anything you can't really prove or disprove. Now, those things might not be of immediate practical use, but still worth thinking about.

I disagree. What you can ultimately prove or disprove depends fully upon what you classify as 'evidence', which rests upon what Paradigm you have, which rests upon (you guessed it) Philosophy.

Realitycrash:I disagree. What you can ultimately prove or disprove depends fully upon what you classify as 'evidence', which rests upon what Paradigm you have, which rests upon (you guessed it) Philosophy.

Realitycrash:I disagree. What you can ultimately prove or disprove depends fully upon what you classify as 'evidence', which rests upon what Paradigm you have, which rests upon (you guessed it) Philosophy.

I suppose so, but that seems to be getting close to solipsism there.

No. Not even close, in fact ^^Solipsism is the belief that the world is just a projection of one self, and one self is all that exist.

Realitycrash:I disagree. What you can ultimately prove or disprove depends fully upon what you classify as 'evidence', which rests upon what Paradigm you have, which rests upon (you guessed it) Philosophy.

I suppose so, but that seems to be getting close to solipsism there.

No. Not even close, in fact ^^Solipsism is the belief that the world is just a projection of one self, and one self is all that exist.

Realitycrash:I think that Science still hasn't got dick to say about Ethics, which is the really interesting part of Philosophy (Metaethics in particular), so I think such a statement is stupid.Now, Science has rendered a lot of Naturalphilosophy and Metaphysics moot, and I am FINE with that. In fact, I fully support it. Right now, I am working on incorporating Ethics into a scientific paradigm too, so that we can reduce moral statements to natural, empirical statements (i.e I am doing some writing on the subject), but the question won't be settled for a looong time. If ever.

Edit: Besides, don't they understand that 'Science' is just another Paradigm, which can readily be interchanged, should it so be fit?

On the other hand, Ethics is actively harmful to the betterment of Science.

Random example, pretty much 100% of the data and knowledge about how the human body reacts to extreme temperatures comes from the Nazi's experiments, which has led to the development of treatments for things like hypothermia and frostbite.

Likewise, the data obtained by the Japanese Unit 731 was used after the war to found a pharmaceutical company, Green Cross. Interestingly, they had quite a substantial amount of medical data from their experiments, but the US Government only took the data on biological weapons and ignored the medical data.

Edit: Another non-holocausty example; human cloning has been banned the world over because of the ethical concerns.

Well, not per necessity it is not. Ethics is not set in stone. Also, one can ask himself: What's the point of Science? Science for Science's sake, or for humans sake?

Both. But I'll give a hypothetical example in this case;

2,000-5,000 people die (as in, either become lobotomized or experience clinical brain death) as the result of experiments on the brain and gene therapies, but a much greater understanding of the human brain results from the experiments, as well as a cure for cerebral palsy (Because that would be the original goal, and studying the brain and how it reacts to damage and such would be a side-effect). So now the field of mental health is greatly improved with the knowledge, as well as saving the millions affected by Cerebral Palsy, and the tens of thousands of people that are born with the condition each year.

Logic tells us that going forward with this is more than worth it. Ethics dictates that it's unconscionable. (I know that ethics is variable, but I'm sure that in first world countries, you'd be hard pressed to find a majority of people that believe the ends justifies the means)

I wouldn't say that philosophy is dead. Philosophers often pose very interesting questions and examine logical frameworks that make up processes such as science. There is a philosophy to science, even if some would call it a method.

I will say that the primacy of philosophy is dead. But that died a LONG time ago. In the olden days (we're talking about hundreds upon hundreds if not thousands of years in the past), Philosophy was king. It was the only acceptable method for "divining the secrets of the universe". Folks like Aristotle thought that the entire universe and all the laws in it could be uncovered through pure mental thought. This isn't the case. Nothing says that reality needs to conform to our thoughts.

Philosophy is still important and interesting, but it isn't the whole show anymore. Thinking and logic are important processes, but BY THEMSELVES they cannot unveil the truth of the world. What we THINK is real and what IS real often isn't the same thing.

So we have to TEST. We have to run our ideas up against the bulk of reality. An idea is no good if reality says it's wrong, and by testing and performing experiments, we can test whether or not our thoughts reflect reality.

Of course, if you're a fan of Descartes, you'd know that, yes, it is true that we cannot be sure of anything else except our own existence. But practically speaking, I'm 99.99999% certain that the rest of the world exists and that there are laws governing it. I know it's fun to ponder philosophical questions like "plato's cave", but at the end of the day, we all treat reality as if it is really there. I mean, if I held a gun up to your head, would you REALLY sit there and ponder "Does this gun really exist? Or is it a dream?!", or would you do the far more sensible thing and duck or hold up your hands?

Logic tells us that going forward with this is more than worth it. Ethics dictates that it's unconscionable. (I know that ethics is variable, but I'm sure that in first world countries, you'd be hard pressed to find a majority of people that believe the ends justifies the means)

No, logic says nothing of the sort. Simplistic act utilitarian assumptions which take nothing other than the most direct result into account might indicate that it is worth it, but logic does not. Logic requires premises to say anything whatsoever, and even then it is only a matter of saying what is consistent or is not consistent with those premises. "Is statement A consistent with statement B" is the sort of question logic can answer-- which is the place for logical deduction in science: is observation A consistent with hypothesis B and assumptions about the experimental conditions C? And if the answer is no, then that indicates a faulty observation, a wrong hypothesis, or false assumptions about the experimental conditions: it doesn't indicate which one of those is flawed. "Is sacrificing the lives or wellbeing of X number of people to achieve Y number of positive treatments (with no additional information about any other effects of this action) worth doing" is not a question which is answered in any way by logic. It is answered by premises and assumptions. "There are no other effects" could be one such premise or assumption. Is that true? Logic doesn't tell us. Positive or lifesaving treatments have value. Lives have value. Are those true? Logic doesn't tell us. Those are matters of opinion, actually.

As a matter of clarification, whether people believe the ends justify the means depends on the particular ends and the particular means in every case. It is never a general question as some people attempt to frame it. Plenty of people will agree that killing soldiers on a battlefield or occupying territory with a military organization is a perfectly acceptable means to defend a state or even remove a hostile regime from power; the ends may justify the means in those such cases. Everyone thinks that some ends justify some means. And everyone thinks that some other ends do not justify some other means.

Danny Ocean:Should we be looking to science to answer the biggest questions, or are there areas of understanding that science cannot reach that philosophy can?

Philosophy can address areas of understanding that science (supposedly) cannot reach, but not in any more factual or necessarily better a way. Philosophers can say pretty much whatever the fuck they want without becoming unphilosophical-- which seems not even to be a word it is so impossible. The reason that philosophy can tackle areas of understanding that science tends to shy away from is because philosophy has no standards. That lack of standards also makes it quite usually very unsatisfying or fallacious and wrong when it comes to answering questions of fact which science supposedly cannot address. But philosophy addresses many things which are not accurately described as 'understanding', at least not understanding in a sense that implies knowledge about the world.

What philosophy can do is show what set of statements (don't) make sense and reveal the structure of our arguments and thereby give us choices about what assumptions we will continue to hold, abandon, or newly adopt if those arguments don't quite work. The sorts of discoveries that philosophy gives us are about the relations between ideas. As ideas can include matters of fact, there is the role of philosophy in interpreting the meaning of scientific discoveries: what ideas that we hold are disturbed by a new scientific discovery? That is a question that philosophy can ask and attempt to provide an answer. The man who said that philosophy is primarily an enterprise of clarification was correct: that clarification can be important to understanding just what we ought to regard as true. But as far as how the world actually works, what actually is the case, that is a matter of empiricism.

Kopikatsu:On the other hand, Ethics is actively harmful to the betterment of Science.

Random example, pretty much 100% of the data and knowledge about how the human body reacts to extreme temperatures comes from the Nazi's experiments, which has led to the development of treatments for things like hypothermia and frostbite.

Likewise, the data obtained by the Japanese Unit 731 was used after the war to found a pharmaceutical company, Green Cross. Interestingly, they had quite a substantial amount of medical data from their experiments, but the US Government only took the data on biological weapons and ignored the medical data.

Edit: Another non-holocausty example; human cloning has been banned the world over because of the ethical concerns.

IIRC, there was no real data collected from the Nazi experiments, it was all Unit 731.

Philosophy, IMHO, is still important, because there are some things science can't answer, and never will be able to. Not just ethics, but anything you can't really prove or disprove. Now, those things might not be of immediate practical use, but still worth thinking about.

I disagree. What you can ultimately prove or disprove depends fully upon what you classify as 'evidence', which rests upon what Paradigm you have, which rests upon (you guessed it) Philosophy.

Evidence is one thing, but that doesn't tell you anything about how to use it.

I'm a utilitarian, and science is great for identifying whether something will cause a particular level of damage/harm, for example. But the moral basis for utilitarianism (e.g. minimise harm) is entirely extrascientific.

Science is based and written in philosophy, and is limited in the range of judgements it can make. So not only will philosophy be alive as long as science is, but also science is incapable of totally replacing philosophy or becoming the sole branch of it.

Philosophy has a habit of raising question that can't be answered, philosophers do however answer them but for every philosopher that says things are a certain way there are 10 going in the opposite way. There usually isn't a right or wrong answer ever in philosophy it's all what you use choose to base your principles on and in my open a lot of what those philosophical principles are based on are more philosophical principles.

It's all abstract thinking that lacks a clear cut purpose. So I guess you could say philosophy is dead for everyone that doesn't believe there should be anything except clear cut purpose. Democratization is probably the biggest threat to philosophy, right now people can vote on politicians that can vote on our ethics and our opinions, we all base it on our personal beliefs and many people don't take a philosophical approach to thinking about anything especially not things they've been told since birth are wrong. And everything the law can't control in regards to philosophy is really just background noise raising questions with no answer or questions that have no real bearing.

The irony of saying science kills philosophy is that science itself is a philosophy. The scientific method is an answer to the philosophical question of "what is the best way to acquire natural knowledge?" Before that philosophers argued it was the Bible, or pure rational thought or a mixture of both. If you take any academic field of study and start asking why is it the way they do it, you're asking philosophical questions.

There is a reputation for philosophy being obsessed with unanswerable questions like is everything real? Or how do we know if other people have minds? Which may do philosophy more harm than good really- I think where philosophy really comes into its own is medical and scientific ethics, which i feel demonstrates how science and philosophy compliment each other.

"Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.[1][2] Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument."

Science is philosophy.

(I stole the quote from wikipedia but screw it they provided sources.)

Logic tells us that going forward with this is more than worth it. Ethics dictates that it's unconscionable. (I know that ethics is variable, but I'm sure that in first world countries, you'd be hard pressed to find a majority of people that believe the ends justifies the means)

I disagree. Many people in the first world would be fine with it. A whole lot more people would be fine with it, as long as it doesn't happen to THEM or THEIR families (because they are hypocritical assholes). A majority, though? No. However, if phrased differently, we might. If we say 'Alright, these people will die, but they will die anyway, because they have a critical condition!', we would win over a lot more people. If we say 'We are giving them a choice', then any problem would be nullified (though we would most likely not find 2000 people to offer themselves in one nation, so it's moot).

I personally believe that if the consequences warrant it, we should go forward with it, IF it is so that violating a standing Moral Rule (such as 'don't kill', 'don't enslave', 'don't rape', etc etc, you know the the stuff. I'm speaking broadly here, we have thousands) accepted by your society does not bring about even worse consequences than what you are trying to achieve.So, we ask ourselves: Would 'Government experiments on random people, which results in death, and is a-okey with it' generate a better moral praxis and consequences than curing this disease? I am doubtful.

IIRC, there was no real data collected from the Nazi experiments, it was all Unit 731.

Philosophy, IMHO, is still important, because there are some things science can't answer, and never will be able to. Not just ethics, but anything you can't really prove or disprove. Now, those things might not be of immediate practical use, but still worth thinking about.

I disagree. What you can ultimately prove or disprove depends fully upon what you classify as 'evidence', which rests upon what Paradigm you have, which rests upon (you guessed it) Philosophy.

Evidence is one thing, but that doesn't tell you anything about how to use it.

I'm a utilitarian, and science is great for identifying whether something will cause a particular level of damage/harm, for example. But the moral basis for utilitarianism (e.g. minimise harm) is entirely extrascientific.

Funny, so am I. or Rule Utilitarian anyway. But that had nothing to do with my disagreement.

Logic tells us that going forward with this is more than worth it. Ethics dictates that it's unconscionable. (I know that ethics is variable, but I'm sure that in first world countries, you'd be hard pressed to find a majority of people that believe the ends justifies the means)

No, logic says nothing of the sort. Simplistic act utilitarian assumptions which take nothing other than the most direct result into account might indicate that it is worth it, but logic does not. Logic requires premises to say anything whatsoever, and even then it is only a matter of saying what is consistent or is not consistent with those premises. "Is statement A consistent with statement B" is the sort of question logic can answer-- which is the place for logical deduction in science: is observation A consistent with hypothesis B and assumptions about the experimental conditions C? And if the answer is no, then that indicates a faulty observation, a wrong hypothesis, or false assumptions about the experimental conditions: it doesn't indicate which one of those is flawed. "Is sacrificing the lives or wellbeing of X number of people to achieve Y number of positive treatments (with no additional information about any other effects of this action) worth doing" is not a question which is answered in any way by logic. It is answered by premises and assumptions. "There are no other effects" could be one such premise or assumption. Is that true? Logic doesn't tell us. Positive or lifesaving treatments have value. Lives have value. Are those true? Logic doesn't tell us. Those are matters of opinion, actually.

You win my 'Best post of the month' award. Maybe it's just me that has a pet-peeve against how people use the term 'logic'..

SimpleThunda':The only thing science has ever done is make living different. I wouldn't even say better.It gives us answers on questions, but those answers will bring up more questions. There is no final answer.

How is that different to philosophy? Surely if someone actually came up with a philosophy for life, the universe and everything, there would be others who disagree and say that it raised further question?

Science didn't just develop from philosophy. It developed as philosophy. It was a branch of philosophy developed to be a method of attaining accurate, objective, verifiable observations of natural phenomena. It still is just that, a branch of philosophy. In fact, it still uses philosophical tools, like occam's razor. The entire scientific method is essentially a philosophical construct. The same cannot be said of alchemy and chemistry, or homeopathy and medicine.

Science didn't just develop from philosophy. It developed as philosophy. It was a branch of philosophy developed to be a method of attaining accurate, objective, verifiable observations of natural phenomena. It still is just that, a branch of philosophy. In fact, it still uses philosophical tools, like occam's razor. The entire scientific method is essentially a philosophical construct. The same cannot be said of alchemy and chemistry, or homeopathy and medicine.

Medicine didn't just develop from herbal tinctures. It developed as natural remedies. It was a branch of natural medicine developed to be a method of attaining accurate, objective, verifiable healing processes. In fact, it still uses natural tools, like opiates. The entire base of medicine is essentially a herbal remedy construct.

SimpleThunda':The only thing science has ever done is make living different. I wouldn't even say better.It gives us answers on questions, but those answers will bring up more questions. There is no final answer.

How is that different to philosophy? Surely if someone actually came up with a philosophy for life, the universe and everything, there would be others who disagree and say that it raised further question?

Philosophy is about finding your own truth and that truth is different for everybody. As a philosopher that's something you'll have to accept. Rarely the truth you find will be as simple as "an answer".

SimpleThunda':The only thing science has ever done is make living different. I wouldn't even say better.It gives us answers on questions, but those answers will bring up more questions. There is no final answer.

How is that different to philosophy? Surely if someone actually came up with a philosophy for life, the universe and everything, there would be others who disagree and say that it raised further question?

Philosophy is about finding your own truth and that truth is different for everybody. As a philosopher that's something you'll have to accept. Rarely the truth you find will be as simple as "an answer".

Then you're saying that philosophy is the same as science - there is no final answers, and that every answer brings up more questions. There's nothing as simple as "an answer" and every individual has to strive for their own truth, which means every individual's truth is open to questioning since it disagrees with everyone else's.

Science didn't just develop from philosophy. It developed as philosophy. It was a branch of philosophy developed to be a method of attaining accurate, objective, verifiable observations of natural phenomena. It still is just that, a branch of philosophy. In fact, it still uses philosophical tools, like occam's razor. The entire scientific method is essentially a philosophical construct. The same cannot be said of alchemy and chemistry, or homeopathy and medicine.

Medicine didn't just develop from herbal tinctures. It developed as natural remedies. It was a branch of natural medicine developed to be a method of attaining accurate, objective, verifiable healing processes. In fact, it still uses natural tools, like opiates. The entire base of medicine is essentially a herbal remedy construct.

You were saying?

Medicine developed from and as a science. Before that it was fundamentally not medicine. And that last sentence doesn't even work damnit. The scientific method is a philosophical constuct because you need philosophy to justify it or even come up with it. Most of the base of medicine is a scientific construct, as medicine is based in scientific claims and discoveries. What would an herbal remedy construct even be? And stop being pointlessly difficult. Even your annoying arguments here are essentially philosophy. Rationalistic debate. Philosophy is the furthest thing from dead.

How is that different to philosophy? Surely if someone actually came up with a philosophy for life, the universe and everything, there would be others who disagree and say that it raised further question?

Philosophy is about finding your own truth and that truth is different for everybody. As a philosopher that's something you'll have to accept. Rarely the truth you find will be as simple as "an answer".

Then you're saying that philosophy is the same as science - there is no final answers, and that every answer brings up more questions. There's nothing as simple as "an answer" and every individual has to strive for their own truth, which means every individual's truth is open to questioning since it disagrees with everyone else's.

Saying science is the same as philosophy is just weird. I don't even know on what basis you would say something like that.

Philosophy has final answers, but those only go for the mind that came up with that answer, and as that mind changes, the answer may change with it.

If you want to get really cryptic, you could call philosophy the science of subjectivity, and "science" the science of objectivity.

By no means are they the same thing though. It's just stupid to even state that.

I'm curious: how can a component of something render the larger thing obsolete? It's nonsensical. A gear cannot render a clock useless. A nib can never become so advanced that pens are no longer useful. These things may become useless through other advancements, but no advancement in the components can do it.

Science is an epistemology. That is a single component of philosophy--you also have metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics to consider, and while science certainly implies a certain metaphysics (actually, it can be viewed as a meta-experiment of that implication), it leaves ethics and aesthetics more or less alone.